Hello, it's Survivalist patch time! As mentioned last month, Valve's testing team delved deeply enough into their back catalog to give Survivalist a yellow Playable tick for Steam Deck - meaning they judged it playable with a few minor controls issues. I've now fixed those issues in a new patch (v78) and they've given it a green tick! This is on Proton-9.0-4RC.

I think it's the sort of game that works really well on a handheld as the graphics and UI (which were designed for XBox 360 when CRT TVs were still a consideration) look nice and readable on the small screen. Also the top-down view feels logical as it matches the angle you typically hold the Steam Deck at on your lap if you're playing sitting down. So I'm glad it's finally got that tick.

Also included in this patch are some updates for the Brazilian Portuguese translation by the indefatigable Arthur Nunes. And speaking of Brazilian, the translation for Survivalist: Invisible Strain is also now complete!

Here are the full patch notes for v78:

• Fix for not being able to drag map screen and command mode camera using touchscreen on Steam Deck

• Fix for mouse and keyboard prompts showing if you use touch screen controls on Steam Deck

• Fix for Set Greeting not showing virtual keyboard on Steam Deck

• Brazilian Portuguese translation updated

Linux Notes

Since this patch is for Steam Deck and I know people sometimes try to run it on Linux PCs with Proton perhaps it's worth reposting what I wrote in for a previous patch, where I added some command line arguments to enable that. You can enter those by right-clicking the game in your Steam library and putting them in the general tab under Launch Options.

• force_steam_deck - This makes the game pretend it's running on Steam Deck, which enables all the various hacks I added to get it working (which normally would only be enabled if the game detects it's on Steam Deck). You need this to run it on Linux with Proton on a PC, otherwise it will crash!

• force_not_steam_deck - This disables all those hacks even if it detects it's on Steam Deck.

To be clear, this game doesn't officially support Linux as a platform, I'm just trying to ensure it works on Steam Deck and if that means it also runs on Linux with Proton that's just a nice bonus.